Latte Magnets for the Water Counter

“Did you drink anything today?”
“Yes… I think I did… I had a cup of coffee… maybe two…”
“Any water?”
One of my sons is keen on proper water consumption and I really appreciate his healthy diligence.

I keep a Water Counter on the refrigerator. You can check out the tutorial here.

To help curb my coffee intake, I made two Latte Magnets. From now on, it’s two cups of coffee a day max. Coffee is no substitute for water. In fact, caffeine actually dehydrates you and flushes fluid. So for each cup of coffee you drink, drink one or more cups of water to stay hydrated.

The magnets were first coated with gold acrylic paint.

The magnets are painted with gold acrylic paint.

Here you can see the finished magnets, as well as my test painting right on the tray.

For the test, I made a puddle of gold acrylic paint on the paint tray. Immediately after that, while the paint was wet, I used the tip of a toothpick to lightly dab on blobs of white gesso. The gesso was carefully dabbed on top of the wet gold paint, not mixed in. Then I used a toothpick to draw through the gesso and gold paint to make the design. The test worked great so I did the same thing on the magnets and let them dry overnight.

To make the design, I dabbed on two small blobs of white right next to each other for the heart and long thin “smilies” under, for the leaves. It only took one sweep of the toothpick down through the center to make the design.

White gesso is dabbed on a puddle of gold acrylic paint. A toothpick dragged down through the center of the wet paint creates the cute Latte design.

Little Latte Magnets.

Now when the water counter on the refrigerator just has two cups of coffee in it… that means drink more water!

Plastic wine glass Water Counter on my refrigerator with water, juice/wine and Latte Magnets. Today it’s one glass of juice, one cup of coffee and two glasses of water… need more water.